


Your soul is a chosen country

by aesc



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Anal Play, Anal Sex, BDSM, Bondage, Dirty Talk, Epistolary, Exhibitionism, Love Letters, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Restraints, Rimming, a few other referenced things they don't actually do but think about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 07:35:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/636600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesc/pseuds/aesc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sends letters, of course, because out in the sticks there's not much to do except tend to Westchester's endless affairs. And, of course, avoid tending to those affairs by going on walks, riding, and writing letters that make him hard and thrill secretly when he hands the properly-sealed, addressed envelope to the butler.</p><p>
  <i>I was in London the other day, and in a bookseller's along The Strand I found the most interesting and instructive volume. Or rather, it would have proved instructive if we had not already worked our way through much of the repertoire. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Billets-doux

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so during my Thirty Days self-challenge, I started a powered!AU that is set in 1923 where Erik is an anarchist and Charles has a ton of crazy theories that will change the world, but mostly the two of them write dirty letters to each other and they have a lot of sex in their little Parisian apartment. More properly, 1923!Erik and Charles got their start [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/282638), but the way I understand them really first gets fleshed out [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/482151/chapters/842450).
> 
> Originally, I wrote three parts for the challenge. Today, instead of working on the things I should be working on, I edited/expanded them and wrote a fourth. I put them all together for ease of finding.
> 
> If you've read "Billets-doux," "L'heure bleu," and/or "L'infini roulé blanc," the first three parts are not significantly different plot-wise, but there are a few extra sexy things and some additional world-building/gestures at plot.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I must gather you to me, dearest, and crush you against my body as I plow into you. No one else can have you, Charles – not the world, not the others in our circle. You are mine.
> 
>  _I am_ you say in my head, in the language that is the language of pure knowing.

**Billets-doux (love letters)**

It's not that Charles begrudges Erik's absence, precisely. Their joint work in advancing the interests of the adaptives, and Erik's in challenging the empires that hang grimly on to their past glory mean that, perforce, they must spend time apart. Erik, wanderer that he is, kites off back to Germany or Spain or the Netherlands, sometimes at a moment's notice, moments when Charles is busy trying to manage L'Enfer's affairs – or moments when, Charles thinks wryly, his optimism is too much for Erik's cynicism. Every now and then Charles returns to England to reassure his mother he hasn't been murdered – not that she seems to care much; his continual exploits and the papers' coverage of them worry her much more – and goes to America to see Raven, and these are trips Erik, when in the grip of obsession, does not take with him.

The ones they _do_ take together, locked in Charles's stateroom… well. He can't help but smile, remembering the last one. It had been a short trip to Rome on the _Caspartina_. The yacht was spoils of the war with Schmidt, or so Erik considered it, and his fierce, bloody delight had spent itself repeatedly on Charles's flesh – or that once, with Erik still in evening dress, resplendent in black and silver, regally sprawled in a damasked chair like a king, his fingers laced proprietarily through Charles's hair as Charles knelt naked between his legs and sucked him. One of the other gifts given to him as a telepath is a steeltrap memory, and without effort Charles remembers the rough silk embroidery – gold and crimson – against his chest, the salt and weight of Erik on his tongue and catches his breath when he remembers Erik pushing him so his thick cock pressed down his throat and Erik's fingers slid to the curve of his jaw to feel himself as Charles flexed and choked moaned around him.

He can't help but smile and touch the corner of his mouth, where Erik had touched him and said, _Open up_. Before he looks too much of a loon to the passersby, Charles directs that smile at a young woman passing him, brightly enough for her to blush and turn her head away – even as she glances at him from under demurely-lowered lashes. He takes a moment to enjoy this fleeting privacy, the wordless communication of his attention and her shy pleasure, before returning to the world again.

Paris throbs with life, as urgently vital as it had been before the war – or more urgent, Charles thinks, a heart hurrying to make up for lost time, straining to flush the body full of life again. When he'd been a boy, protecting himself against this – the perpetual crush of minds against him, crowded closer than bodies – but now, with his control so finely honed he can dart in and out of those minds, plucking sights, sounds, memories, impressions, anything he wishes out of them.

One time at L'Enfer he had drunk absinthe. He'd licked the sugar and anise off Erik's lips while Emma and the others gathered around them laughed and encouraged them. That moment had nearly overpowered him with delight. Doing this, dipping his fingers into so much vibrancy, may be even better.

And he has a letter in his pocket, Charles reminds himself, the paper pressed against his chest, underneath jacket and waistcoat. The thought makes him quicken his step, even if Erik would have something mocking to say about someone so short trying to hurry.

The letter has been there for the better part of the morning while he's made the rounds proper to an activist-socialite. Coffee with a clutch of American expatriates had dragged into lunch and then drinks, and then a trip to the Place Saint-Suplice to speak with yet another American, this one a journalist who had sat patiently through Charles's prognostics on the future, her flowing dress bright against the stones of the fountain where they'd been sitting and the pigeons swirling around her feet.

There is so much to say, _too_ much. Charles rather fears he'd overwhelmed her – she'd left looking glassy-eyed. Usually he would have accepted her invitation to tea or dinner to continue their conversation informally, but he finds he wants to be away. If Erik had been there, he would have said "Oh, you have another acolyte," in a tone too dry to be called jealous, but the spark would have been in his eyes all the same, enough to melt Charles's bones and his resolve to work for the rest of the day.

Erik isn't here, though, and without his obsession having them chase down anarchists and adaptives from morning to midnight, Charles can be lazy for once. He makes himself invisible to the few people who know him enough to demand conversation – Alex Summers and Sean Cassidy, the Lady Mary Crawley (who really does not need to be shielded, she's that engrossed in her journal) – and hurries down the last stretch of the rue de Fleurus.

Bohemians and expatriates inhabit the street, an odd mix of the raffish and the rich. Some of the women there – and many of the men – would send his mother into a faint if she saw them. They already do, and she's heard of them only by report and scandal in the society pages. To appease her, Charles keeps apartments at Le Meurice, nothing too ostentatious, enough that his mother won't be embarrassed to send letters there. When Erik's with him he checks his mail with the concierge perhaps once every other week. 

They're too busy otherwise; at times he makes Erik go to appreciate his rough, contrary beauty against all that refinement. They had fucked in the parlor, surrounded by Rococo and the knowing eyes of painted Renaissance ladies, Erik pushing Charles up against the window and screwing his fingers into him slow and sloppy, asking _What do you think that precious maid of yours will think when she sees what a mess you've made of the glass? What do you think she'll tell your mother?_ as Charles broke apart.

The important address, though, is this one before him now, with its old stone façade and Baroque sculpture above the door and icing the windows, and the third floor.

At last he turns into that address, trotting past the bored doorman and a Bohemian lady who's come – Charles flickers through her head – ah, to inquire after friends who live on the second floor. Charles takes the stairs two at a time, creating a racket that irks the friend (just coming out of her apartment now) and not really caring about it. His hands are clumsy on the keys as he takes them from his pocket, worse with the lock.

How Erik would laugh to see Charles so clumsy, to see him hurrying through the front rooms and down the hall, past the art and the piles and piles of books and letters, to the small bedroom they keep for themselves in the back. It's small because Erik had insisted the place was too much extravagance as it was when Charles had rented it, but Charles knows Erik and knows he likes the closeness required by the small bed, so the two of them must twine close together and stay that way for the night.

Small bed or no, it's more luxury than Erik would prefer, but it's less than Charles is used to – a compromise, in a relationship that swings like a mad pendulum under the influence of two idealists. Erik scoffs when Charles calls him that, but he _is_ , no less than Charles: his ideals guide his actions as much as Charles's do his. While Charles can't agree with Erik in all particulars, if Erik were less passionate, Charles might not find himself drawn to Erik the way he is.

Oh, who is he trying to have on; there are many, _many_ parts of Erik he loves, some of them more carnally than others.

He drops gracelessly onto the bed – their bed, distressingly half-empty – and kicks his shoes off. They hit the floor as he slides a thumb under the fold of the envelope and pries it open. By the time he has the paper unfolded and out, he's stretched across his side of the bed, trembling with anticipation.

Charles ignores the date and the address, but spares a moment to trace a finger over the familiar script in the salutation. It even _looks_ swift, the letters hurried along by Erik's impatience.

> My beloved:
> 
> I sit here on my thin mattress, in a hotel room that overlooks the Potsdamer Platz. I have my cock in my hand, stroking it idly as I look up at the ceiling. 
> 
> Instead of the light, I see you kneeling astride me, looking down at me. You are naked; I am touching one of your hips, molding my fingers to that perfect subtle curve. If I were to slide my hand back ever so little, I could palm your perfect arse, my darling. How would you like that, dearest love, if I stroked the flawless round of it with fingers light as gossamer – or if I dug my fingers in and bruised it (an apple so carelessly plucked), so later I could lick over and soothe the flesh I had grievously offended? And how would you like it if I slid my finger into you ever so slowly, so slowly you perhaps did not notice it at first because you would be too entranced by my tongue tracing the head of your cock?

(Oh god that night, they had kept the windows open and God only knew what the neighbors had thought if they had seen. Charles had removed the censure from their memories, and the certain knowledge of two men, and left only blurs of two bodies twisted ecstatically together. That night he had rocked slowly into Erik's mouth, his prick sliding along the plush cradle of Erik's tongue, and those long, lovely fingers had loosened him in burning, perfect fractions as Erik sucked him.) 

Charles licks his lips, eyes sliding half-shut, still open enough to read the letter. He knows this expression of his, the one Erik loves best: the sweet, golden boy transforming into something wanton. _Not transforming_ , Erik would say, _because you are wanton, you desire, you need what only I can give you, isn't that so?_

 _Yes, Erik_ , Charles would say, because it is the truth. He _does_ want, and what he wants is Erik, always and in all the ways he can have him.

> I've heard you moan like the pretty slut you are for me, so I know you would love it. There are times when I listen to you talk to the other revolutionaries, the artists, the idiots who have no conception of your brilliance, and I think even without your ability you could talk the world into kneeling at your feet to do you homage. Still, I think you are most eloquent when you can't speak, either when I've gagged you (when I've licked and nibbled your throat, just over your voicebox, to taste the vibrations before they can become speech) or when I'm fucking you up that gorgeous arse of yours and you moan and whine so sweetly.
> 
> The city is rainy tonight. Outside my window the Schulgartenstraße is a blur of yellow and black. I can hear the voices: the people of Berlin are not easily conquered by the weather, there is so much to do. Of course I could join them; there are _my_ people among that number, for certain. There is still work to do, despite the hour and weather.
> 
> But I will stay here, watching my cock swell between my fingers. Do you miss it, Charles? I know I miss being inside you, the sweet, slick clutch of your body, always tight as a virgin despite your knowing what to do to bring me off. The first time we lay together I knew you were not pure, of course, but as I watched that blush mantle your cheeks and spread sweetly down your neck to flow out across the floodplain of your chest, I could pretend. Even when you touched me fearlessly, and whispered into my ear that you dreamed of having me fuck you, of having me come in you (and how you would touch yourself, imagining your fingers – how inadequate! – to be my prick), I could triumph somehow.

Charles presses a palm to his own cock, aching against the placket of his trousers. He shivers once, hard, the arousal working down his spine to the tips of his toes, spreading through to every nerve ending. He spreads his legs slightly, enough that he can slide his fingers into the crease between leg and groin and cup himself.

> As I lie here, you are rocking slowly into my mouth. You want more, of course you do, but you can have only what I choose to give: the tip of your cock, a few inches of it, my tongue glancing lightly round it or the full warmth of my mouth. I love the way you taste, better than wine and more intoxicating. I would drink all of you, I _will_ , when I allow you to come. But for now your body remains obedient to the hands I have on you, the sweat glazing your skin so you are haloed with light. But that light is not holy, but is lascivious: it slides along you as close as I wish to be, clinging to every line of you. It even has the temerity to brush your nipples (oh, your lovely nipples, sweeter than a girl's; I could write odes about them, if I wanted to waste time writing poetry instead of tonguing them and making you scream and press up into me when I suckle them too hard and bite them) and the ridge of your collar bone, there at the base of your throat where your passionate sweat collects.
> 
> Later I will turn us over so you are beneath me, your legs spread so I can settle between them, and the light will have you no longer, my darling.

Charles would be embarrassed by the whine that escapes him if anyone were around to hear it. He has his own cock out now, a sloppily-licked palm running along the length of it, drawing the foreskin back to expose the sensitive head, flicking a nail along the underside for the acute pleasure of it. Erik would make it slow, of course, the magnificent weight of his shoulders and chest pressing Charles down into the bed while one hand confidently took him apart. _Yes_ , it would be slow and Charles would whisper his desire straight into Erik's head, allowing him to see and feel what Charles saw and felt, and the tension in his spine that gathers and gathers, held in check only by that slow, maddening pace. 

He rocks up into his hand, although it's an effort to keep it slow, an effort to focus on the paper trembling in front of him.

> I turn you over on your stomach, my love, to inspect the wings of your shoulder blades as they row together when you try to push yourself up on your elbows to ask me what I think I'm doing. You _know_ what I think, of course, because I give it to you: my mouth traveling down your spine, a pleasant journey to the cleft of your arse – the two dimples above it are oases, where I can drink in your sweat and your smell. I lick those four spots where my fingers so cruelly abused you – they're warm, warmer than the rest of you; I can sense the iron in the blood rushing up to the skin, to fill the places where you have broken apart.
> 
> The humid space between your legs – ah, I could spend forever there. Your balls, the beginning of your prick as it curves up (and oh, you're rutting against the sheets, you whore – you utterly delightful creature), the little hole I've only begun to open. It needs slicking, though, before you can hope to take me without pain…

"Oh god Erik, yes." He _is_ that moment now, the intimate slickness of Erik's tongue between the cheeks of his arse, himself pressing back into it and begging shamelessly for more. Erik gives it to him, a heady wave of lust and intoxication, his hands pushing Charles wider so he can work himself in yet more deeply. 

When he comes, after a few more shaking, careless strokes, he comes across his waistcoat, the splashes of it pale against the gray pinstripe. His mind shudders in the grip of orgasm and memory, caught between the pleasure Erik's words have just pulled out of him and the memory of that night, when he'd come into the sheets with four of Erik's fingers buried in him and Erik kissing the last few knobs of his spine, his mind singing victory songs in Charles's head.

> Now (and I mean here, in Berlin) I am thrusting hard up into my own palm, imagining that it's you I'm fucking. With my eyes shut I see you boneless and yielding underneath me – but not passive, no, never that. Your face is turned to the side, enough that I can see just the edges of your smile and the haze in your stained-glass eyes, and then you _move_ against me, pushing up onto my cock so I slide in deep as can be.
> 
> I must gather you to me, dearest, and crush you against my body as I plow into you. No one else can have you, Charles – not the world, not the others in our circle. You are mine.
> 
> _I am_ you say in my head, in the language that is the language of pure knowing.

(Here Erik's writing changes; it no longer has the swift, fluid gait of before.)

> (Oh, I've come – I've spilled all over my own hand. If you were here, I would rub it into your skin, so I could smell the bitter salt of it on you later. After you washed it off (or perhaps you would keep it on…?) it would still remain, an invisible mark.)
> 
> You are so full of come now, dearest; I fancy I can feel it, sticky around my trembling, still-hard prick. I stay in you for a time – god you are so full, so tight, so hot, you are flawless – and wish I could fuck you like this forever. I would keep you tied down with the metal rungs of the bed and have you whenever I wished, and never tire of you. Even knowing the impossibility, I wish for it. When I pull out, some of my come drips out of you and lies white against the damp sleekness of your thigh. I should lick it up, I think, but instead I tuck my face into your neck, where your hair curls, where the skin is so tender, and breathe, and listen to you breathe.

Charles has to set the letter down and undress, not from the desire to start another round – that's wrung out of him, still – but from comfort. He's nearly sweated to death in his suit and the close warmth of the bedroom as it is, and his laundress will be distressed by the state of his trousers (disgracefully wrinkled) and waistcoat (best not think about that for now). Undressing is awkward, as he does not yet trust his legs enough to stand, but he manages it, keeping only the pocket-watch, Erik's pocket-watch, for himself. 

He sets the letter on Erik's pillow and curls up and, through, sleep heavy eyes, reads the last paragraph.

> I wonder how it is I have not tainted you with my darkness, that I have not broken you. I have wanted you as I've wanted nothing else in my life, not even the end of the regimes that daily oppress the innocent, not even the rise of our own superior species. Perhaps this is because you are the one thing I have wanted for myself. That first night, I thought I would have broken you with how much I wanted you, but as some unearthly iron, you only became stronger. Whatever darkness I have doesn't sully you – not that you are innocent (as you remind me daily), but still… I want to beg to ruin you. When I return, I may be desperate enough to do that.
> 
> The work here proceeds quickly, but not quickly enough. Look for me in a week; do not look to be let out of bed for at least three days after my return. You've taught me indolence, my love; I must show you how well I've studied. I will have you with your legs hooked over my shoulders, with you astride me and riding my cock until you've lost all rhythm and your ecstasy is an endless tumble in my head, with you tied down by whatever metal I can find…
> 
> These are not the possibilities I imagined when you first pulled me out of the Seine. But they are delightful to imagine, are they not?
> 
> Sleep well, my love.
> 
> E.

(Charles does.)


	2. L'heure bleu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is only a few days before I see you again. My business in Zurich will be concluded in one day, two at the most, and then I will board a train back east to the heart of the world, to where you are.
> 
> I wonder if you have received the last letter I sent, the one from the rainy night in Berlin. I'm hard, thinking about you lying in our bed, reading those first lines and gasping so prettily, perhaps reading along, your lips and tongue lingering on each obscenity as you imagine what I've written. You touched yourself, I know it and I don't need your telepathy to know it; you touched yourself and wished it was my hand upon you.

**L'heure bleu (the blue hour)**

The train from Berlin to Zurich runs swiftly. Its pace is unusual, given how, five years after the war German transportation has not yet fully recovered, but perhaps _not_ unusual with an adaptive powering the gears along, forcing more speed than the tired old engine should produce. Erik lets the metronome ticking of the great pistons settle into a corner of his awareness along with the heat of the fire in the engine's heart and attempts to settle himself in the richly plush chair of the first-class saloon and concentrate on his letter.

> My beloved Charles,
> 
> This letter will find you before I do; it will know your touch – the touch of your fingers, your lips – before I can do so much as claim a handshake from you. My jealousy of it is nearly enough to persuade me not to send it… but then you would castigate me for failing to correspond with you regularly. On second thought, perhaps I should _not_ send it after all, for the punishment you inflict is sweet.

The pen with which he writes is pure gold chased in silver, and the ink in its secure well by his elbow Erik is fairly certain must have been made from the gods' ichor. The pen is only one of the lesser signs of wealth in this carriage: the richly paneled wood, the chandeliers chiming softly as the train rocks back and forth along its tracks, the few men and women who have lingered after supper to talk – Erik has never been particularly passionate about gold and silver (they don't sing to him, not the way iron does), but the richness of metal tumbling on a lady's breast, a fine-tuned pocketwatch warming in the waistcoat of the man talking to her have their own seduction. 

A boy who grew up in the Ruhr, and who discovered his affinity for metals, might be forgiven for preferring iron and steel, the metals that forge the future. Without them no silver or gold can be had. Iron and steel have won freedom in the past, for all that Charles insists that gold also has that ability. _Those who have gold don't need to worry about freedom_ , Erik says when Charles begins to talk about influencing the government and financiers, and wants to hit Charles over the head with _Das Kapital_ when Charles refuses to understand.

Well, Erik reminds himself, Schmidt had had gold and had thought to use his riches to shield himself from Erik's iron fury. Now Schmidt's vast holdings belong to him and Emma, from the yacht that drowses in sunny Marseilles to the plush sanctum of L'Enfer and a dozen other places besides. It's a triumph that glows white like forge-heated metal in Erik's heart when he thinks of it, and thinks that he has Charles with him and that the world is theirs, or will be.

> My trip so far has been productive in a few respects. Across the country workers have been striking – there is too much uncertainty now, with the burden of war reparations hanging over the state and the ruling classes made impotent by fear and the disastrous foolishness that the Republic has inherited from its imperial predecessors. The trick will be managing the chaos and guiding it in the proper direction; namely, away from whatever golden yesterday it is where Odin and Bismarck ruled the world. Already there are reports of the Nationalsozialist party agitating, with the old government fallen and the new one still uncertain. There are dozens of other parties competing with them – who is the most bloody, who is the most devoted to the great Germany of the past, who is the most fucking illogical blockhead that can persuade the most blockheads to follow him into nostalgia.

He is, of course, the cuckoo in this gilded nest. Erik smiles broadly, pleased enough with himself to show it, even if it means the fine lady blushing and looking away, and the mustached man next to her glaring at Erik for his impropriety. This ability to blend and fool could be a second adaptation, very nearly – not at the same level as Charles's sister, of course – but protective coloring and camouflage all the same. He has ridden this same train in the sardine tin of third class, his arse going numb on the uncushioned slatted benches while he listened to babies shrieking and breathed in the smell of too many bodies pressed too close together. And now – queer, adaptive, Jew – he rides it in one of the fine dark gray suits Charles had picked out for him, a silver pin placed just _so_ in the deep blue of his tie, writing a letter to his lover with a Cartier pen.

> It is only a few days before I see you again. My business in Zurich will be concluded in one day, two at the most, and then I will board a train back east to the heart of the world, to where you are.
> 
> I wonder if you have received the last letter I sent, the one from the rainy night in Berlin. I'm hard, thinking about you lying in our bed, reading those first lines and gasping so prettily, perhaps reading along, your lips and tongue lingering on each obscenity as you imagine what I've written. You touched yourself, I know it and I don't need your telepathy to know it; you touched yourself and wished it was my hand upon you.

Erik sighs and drops a discreet hand down to his lap to press against his cock, already hardening in his trousers, as ready as if Charles were here in all his splendid nakedness before him. He thinks, with a jolt of arousal that nearly pulls a groan from his lips, that Charles has planted some compulsion in his brain, driving Erik's thoughts back to him and making him anxious for it in a way Erik has been with no one else. 

Charles is opium, cocaine, absinthe in the blood; he is heady, dangerous in the way he works himself into the soul's very fabric, weaving himself in so there is no separating him. Over a week gone from him Erik finds his thoughts turning to Charles more often, imagining the two of them planning the future in the aftermath of one of their sessions in their tiny bed, the talk turning into fighting and the fighting turning into Charles's mouth coaxing his prick to life again or Erik licking into the sweaty, sleek declivity of Charles's arse – or so many other things, really, that make Erik stroke once, the flat of his palm hard against his cock to sigh and shiver with pleasure before he goes back to his letter, a drop of ink falling from the tip of the pen to splash on the mahogany desktop.

> As I write this, the woman sitting three tables away is reading a book. It's Rilke, who writes so movingly of the perfection of the love of the soul and the body. Perhaps she is reading the one beginning with _Einmal nahm ich zwischen meine Hände dein Gesicht. Der Mond fiel darauf ein._ I have done that many times, when it is just the two of us, with you above me and our lamp off to help cool the summer evening, so the only light on you is that of the moon rising over the city and I find I want to touch that light and feel your warmth beneath it. Your cheeks would blush where my hands frame them, warm and soft with your strong jaw underneath. Perhaps your lips would be stained with my come, and with the rose-red of your own blood because you, knowing how much it drives me crazy, bite them coyly in the way a virgin would do.
> 
> I wonder what Frau Proper over there would say if I knew a boy like the Greek statue in Rilke's famous poem – _Aber sein Torso glüht wie ein Kandelaber_ ("his body yet shines like a pillar of flame") – that I had made love to him, that I had opened him with my fingers and plowed that lovely arse of his. You know, I remember so clearly the first time we fucked, that little noise you made when you saw my cock. No god has ever been prayed too so desperately and no prayer has ever been fulfilled more readily… Would Frau Proper recoil from me, if I told her of this – or would she rather bend closer in interest, to hear what it was like having your pert little arse tipped up, ready for the taking, and how it feels to thrust into and be held in such perfect, gripping heat?  
> 

All he can think of is Charles on a hundred nights and a hundred more days, clothed and unashamedly bare, aroused by conversation and by Erik's ardor, his presence spread commandingly across a roomful of aristocrats and intellectuals and his body commanding all Erik's attention when he's stretched across their bed on Sundays, still slick and open and listening to the cathedral bells calling the faithful to worship. Before he can spill the ink again, or draw more attention to himself, Erik steadies his breath and reaches for words again.

> You must know what it is you do to me; you're a telepath, you _must_ know how I sit here, wretched, wanting nothing more than to fly to Paris to take you in my arms and take apart the prim and proper lines of you. I know what you are underneath, when you suck my cock with those greedy little sounds and that whorish, hungry look in your eyes, even though the face you show the world is pure enough for marble and stained glass and you seem tame enough to keep on the wrist, a docile thing bred only for civilization. It is as if, when we are apart you regenerate and become perfect once more, and so when I lay eyes on you after our separations you are fresh, and my only thought is of what I could do to ruin you again

Of course, Charles is _his_ ruin, Erik knows. He's known it from the moment Charles fished him out of the Seine and pulled him into that truly ridiculous rowboat. 

At the time Erik had been too furious at Schmidt escaping him, had given serious thought to demolishing the Pont Saint-Louis to bring it down on Schmidt's head, but then a ringing command to calm himself had jarred him out of his fury and into disbelief because that command had been spoken _in his head_. And poets would laugh to know that Erik had stared blindly up at the boy who had saved him, taken in his dripping chestnut hair and clothes river-stained beyond hope of repair, watched as the boy licked the river from his smiling lips – and had known that this would be the world for him.

He picks up the letter – his hand, Erik is proud to note, does not shake – and the pen and now-stoppered bottle of ink and stands to leave. His arousal has faded slightly but to knowing eyes – Frau Proper could know a thing or two, despite the curl to her lipsticked mouth – the heavy bulge in his trousers cannot possibly be mistaken for anything other than what it is. Fortunately, Frau Proper is still engrossed in her Rilke, her companion snoring at her elbow. Closer now, Erik sees the faintest edges of wear in their corners – her silver battered, his collar worn along the precise fold at his neck. They're much like the train they ride in, one of the few outposts of luxury in a country torn by the war it had brought on itself. 

Charles's money has bought him a private compartment, a luxury he rarely affords himself; still, the trip from Berlin to Zurich is long, and the day is already drawing down with the train – after an irritating series of delays that had provoked Erik into speeding things along – still two hours outside its destination. With the train under the influence of Erik's power, the scenery gallops by, mountains and fields cloaked in late evening. His window looks west, where fire runs along the lip of the cliffs and haloing them in gold; above them, the sky runs the spectrum from the palest, crystalline blue to midnight velvet in the east. Inside his compartment with the lights on, everything is gold, from the brass fittings to the honey-toned wood.

Erik pulls off his jacket and tie and waistcoat, pulls out cufflinks and undoes buttons so he can pull off the starched impediment of his shirt. At some point, an attendant had come by to close the windows against the coming chill, and maybe to gawk at the suitcase stowed in its rack, with its locks melted shut. The bit of cool air that comes through the windows is enough to settle pleasantly against his skin. A small writing desk pulls up to the bed; he places the letter, pen, and inkwell on it and, after a moment's thought, begins to write again.

> You can say what you want, beloved: I'm still the poor Jewish boy who grew up on the wrong side of Düsseldorf. Like Raven I can take on appearances – but the reality remains stubbornly different.
> 
> Do you remember the first time we fucked? Of course you do, but I shall tell you the story anyway.
> 
> It was after a salon. We had gone to see your dear Lady Mary Crawley give a reading from one of her books. You were splendid – the tailor must have had his hands all over you to shape fabric to you like that. He might have touched you anyway, the delicate skin inside your thigh, that thin softness over the muscle that I now delight in biting, because who could resist? Even then, when all I knew of you was your name and that you had saved me, and that I wanted you, I was jealous. I _wanted_. I wore the only suit I had – a suit I bought to better melt into the circles Schmidt frequented – and under it I itched and burned for want of you. All I could think of during the reading and the discussion was how I ached to have you, and how I could have you – for have you I would – and then, at the end, you turned to me with those hot eyes of yours and said that we should leave.

The bed in his compartment is small and not particularly comfortable, but those things are easy to ignore as Erik eases back. His cock still aches, neglected as it is, after too long sitting in that wretched saloon, torturing himself. Getting his hand on it makes him twitch and moan, shifting his hips upward to chase after sensation. When he shuts his eyes, he can imagine Charles there, his long, capable fingers stroking Erik's length, that lovely King's English voice murmuring filthy, awed endearments, _I love how big you are, love how it feels when you first push into me – I can show you, if you want, what it's like when you're fucking me up the arse with your big, hard cock and you're so far gone you don't know what you're doing to me._

And there would be more, maybe that pretty mouth stretched around him to take him in, and that clever tongue – the same one that had recited schoolboy Cicero to a circle of admirers – or was it Cato or Catullus? – earlier that day. Erik had had to drag him off, overcome with heat, and pushed him into an alley and Charles had dropped to his knees, heedless of the danger and Erik had been blind to everything except getting Charles's mouth on him.

 _Catullus, my love_ , Charles had said while Erik was incoherently wondering, face buried in the hot crease of Erik's groin. _Surripui tibi, dum ludis, mellite Iuuenti, suauiolum dulci dulcius ambrosia – a sweet little kiss stolen from a sweet young man_ and licked a meaningful stripe up the length of Erik's cock before pausing to say, "Not quite as ribald as the other ones… But would you like it if I were one of Catullus' teasing virgins? A boy of sixteen, maybe, leading you on with promises before you finally grab me and take what my innocent kisses offer?"

Of course, Erik had never stolen a kiss from Charles; Charles had given him everything willingly, and that's maybe what's most amazing about all of this: that Charles is inexhaustible.

Erik strokes himself hard and fast, merciless with it where Charles prefers to be cruel by dragging it out, teasing Erik with light glances of his tongue, holding himself just out of Erik's reach so Erik can't press bruises and adoration into the subtle strength of muscle and skin and waiting until Erik is mad with it to let the two of them join together. He imagines what Charles had proposed, simply _taking_ , holding Charles down with iron and his will and holding him open with his thumbs while his cock slides in, forcing Charles into the mattress until Erik is buried as deep as he can go, his balls snug against the blushing curves of Charles's ass. Pleasure burns fierce as it always does, lighting Erik up in a wave like electric lights coming on, racing up his spine and igniting under his ribcage and behind his eyes.

He comes on a gasp, sudden and hard and messy all over his hand and dripping onto his clothes and the sheets. His heart rackets in his ears and his breath doesn't quite want to work for a moment before he comes back to himself, spent and still aching.

The letter waits on its desk, the ink from earlier now dried. Erik doesn't bother to clean his hand before picking up the pen and, after another breath to compose himself, picking up where he left off. His own come drips on the page to mix with the ink.

> I just stroked myself off, thinking of you, my love, imagining I was thrusting into the perfect, untouched tightness of your hole. I suppose, when poets write of two souls being knit together, they intend it to signify the highest, purest passion, the sort that ennobles both partners and brings them closer to some mystical understanding that, for the spiritually-inclined, is like the union with G-d, or whatever nonsense it is they write about.
> 
> So I wonder what they would say that the two of us are knit together –but our passion is made of blood and sweat and come, and our bodies twined together in the perfect, unapologetic embrace of flesh.
> 
> Here is what I was thinking of doing to you, beloved, when I return five days hence. First, do not look to be let out of bed for at least a day. Second, do you know how beautiful you would look with the metal bedstead twined around your wrists? Answer: Very, for I would fashion it into nothing so crude as simple manacles, but I would shape them into the most intricate things my power can invent. And then I will torture you, my love, with kisses and bites – I will devour you, I will take you apart and you will be mine again…


	3. L'infini roulé blanc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paris has dressed for the blue hour, wearing her indigo robes that blush pink at the edges and are embroidered with the dark silhouette of the city.
> 
> Charles has dressed for that hour too, Erik sees, in nothing but his pale, lovely skin and, now that Erik's here, the jewelry Erik's fashioned out of the iron spindles of the bed. His eyes echo the rich color beyond the windows, wide and drunk with the sight of Erik standing in the doorway, his lips bitten red and a blush bleeding rose across his cheeks.

**L'infini roulé blanc (infinity rolled white)**

> Here is what I was thinking of doing to you, beloved, when I return five days hence. First, do not look to be let out of bed for at least a day. Second, do you know how beautiful you would look with the metal bedstead twined around your wrists? Answer: Very, for I would fashion it into nothing so crude as simple manacles, but I would shape them into the most intricate things my power can invent. And then I will torture you, my love, with kisses and bites – I will devour you, I will take you apart and you will be mine again…

The telegram arrives a day before Erik himself is due; between it and the flurry of letters Erik's sent – four in all, maybe more if the post is slow. Charles has been left fretful and distracted, aching in the next morning when dreams of what, precisely, Erik plans to do to him on his return, linger behind his eyes and in the tenseness of his muscles and the hard jut of his cock. He tries to stretch into the morning, reminds himself that keeping to his schedule will speed the hours along until the seven o'clock train, but the greater part of him wants to spend the day in bed, tense as a string waiting for a particular finger to pluck it and make it sing. 

Eventually he does get up, only after forcing himself away from stroking himself off – it will, he tells his yearning reflection as he dresses, make tonight all the sweeter – and finds the telegram waiting for him in its envelope at the reception desk downstairs.

 _Wait for me in our favorite place_ it says, only Erik's initials in the valediction. Charles breathes deep, checks the desk clerk for any sign he's noticed Charles's reaction – he hasn't, too busy arguing with his girlfriend on the phone – and leaves to begin his day as best he can.

He is, Charles has to admit, mostly useless today. His own gifts as an adaptive include a talent for maintaining multiple streams of thought and focusing on several problems – or several people – simultaneously, but today that gift has deserted him. Mercifully none of his meetings involve Emma, who would surely torment him pitilessly the moment she sensed the source of his preoccupation; still, it's an effort to keep at least half a thought on the conversations and needs of the day.

Mostly he turns over what place Erik could possibly mean: the Café Nord where they meet for coffee, the plush sanctuary of L'Enfer (which Erik likes mostly because it represents his triumph over Schmidt; it's decadent in a way Erik refuses to admit he likes) with Emma and the others, the libraries at the universities or the Pont Saint-Louis, where they'd met the first time. Even his apartments at Le Meurice, although Erik likes those mostly for the filthy things he's done to Charles there.

Paris has been kind to them, in her own mercurial way; Charles's disenchantment with America, England, and his mother had driven him here, while revenge had driven Erik, and while the city has given them blood and pain of their own it's given them each other, and the only stage large enough for the scope of their desires. The list of places they've visited in their wanderings, from the grandest palaces down to dives so dark and moldy Charles had felt sure they'd come away with the plague, is too long to count. The list of places where they've stolen moments with each other – whether tender (despite Erik's impatience with anything involving _tenderness_ ) or ribald enough to make Charles blush – is very nearly as long.

After the last letter, though, he's fairly certain what Erik means, which only leads him into private imaginings that play across his awareness like cinema, the camera and perspective uncertain, flickering between a first-person view of Erik's dark, rumpled head between his legs and then the tableau of the two of them tangled together, Erik covering him and his own hips arching up to take him in, wanting that gorgeous burning stretch of Erik entering –

His lunch companion notices his distraction, of course; even though Charles senses nothing _particular_ about her, he often wonders if Mary Crawley doesn't have some telepathic spark to her.

"Really, my Lord, if you have somewhere else you have to be, don't let me keep you." Madcap Paris might be, but Lady Mary remains a pillar of formality under her loose dress and long jewelry. One of those flawless, celebrated brows is arched meaningfully, the dark eye beneath it fixed on the crumpled telegram in Charles's hand. "Is it from your friend, Mr. Lehnsherr?"

"It is," Charles admits, fairly certain Lady Mary would catch him in a lie. He reads her quickly, enough to catch a glimpse of her lack of surprise and a flicker of calculation: she thinks them both odd, too passionate and fixated on their causes by half, although she finds the two of them _charming_ , Charles's diffuse energy and the contained power of the other as harmonious as chiaroscuro. She knows how they met – all of Paris does – but, with her own history being what it is, does not quite understand how such two different people stay together.

"Mostly," he continues, after allowing himself a sip of tea and time to collect himself, "I'm rather concerned about what he gets up to on his own."

"Rather like myself and my youngest sister," Lady Mary says dryly, "although it's something I try not to think about if I can possibly help it." She opens her notebook again, her slender fingers taking up the pen resting by it. "Now, I should like very much to hear your impressions of Boston. You said that you had done your undergraduate studies there, before the – why, you must have been _very_ young!" The astonishing eyes blink as Lady Mary does the calculations. "Not above sixteen, I would wager."

"Child prodigy," Charles says, and descends into his tale as Lady Mary's pen flows across the page.

* * *

Paris has dressed for the blue hour, wearing her indigo robes that blush pink at the edges and are embroidered with the dark silhouette of the city.

Charles has dressed for that hour too, Erik sees, in nothing but his pale, lovely skin and, now that Erik's here, the jewelry Erik's fashioned out of the iron spindles of the bed. His eyes echo the rich color beyond the windows, wide and drunk with the sight of Erik standing in the doorway, his lips bitten red and a blush bleeding rose across his cheeks.

"You got my message," Erik says past the sudden dryness in his throat. It's an effort to remain casual, to drape his travel-dusty coat across the back of the room's single chair (an obnoxious, prancing affair, its cushions embroidered with flowers) and sink down into it. His prick throbs between his legs, pressing stupidly against the constriction of his trousers; when he reaches to adjust it, framing the bulge of it with deliberate fingers, Charles's eyes darken and his chest shakes with a sigh.

"Well, it was either this or stand naked in front of the Gare du Nord." Charles _shifts_ , drawing Erik's attention more explicitly to his half-erect cock and the shameless splay of his body. If he could get away with it, if Erik let him, he'd have his legs drawn up so Erik can see the dark, waiting pucker of his hole. "And how would you like that – me standing there, waiting, all those people oblivious…"

"You're mine to see like this," Erik says bluntly, "oblivious humans or not," but he can't help imagining it, Charles flushed deliciously, all that bare flesh for Erik and Erik alone to savor while humanity shuttles back and forth past them unaware of the power standing _right there_ among them. He likes it more than he should, and Charles – who is, of course, eavesdropping – smiles slow and hot and shifts again, the dark blue coverlet hushing beneath him.

"Maybe you should come closer, then," Charles suggests.

He should. Erik stands but pulls the chair along with him until he's seated again, this time by the bed. If Charles hadn't had the spindles of the bed frame woven between his fingers like iron cat's cradle he could have twisted himself around and reached to touch, but as it is he's bound and displayed for Erik to peruse. A book, Erik thinks, he's read many times but that still surprises him.

 _Can you hear what I'm thinking?_ Erik asks. Charles swallows thickly, his throat flexing around a moan, and nods. Erik sets his hands on his own thighs and orders himself to keep them there. Time to touch later, to glut himself on Charles's body the way he wants, but there's something about the delay, stretching out the two weeks they've been apart an hour or so longer until they're ready to break under it.

Charles already sounds broken, or at least fracturing at the edges, fingers stroking the iron threaded through them; it registers as whispers across the part of Erik that houses his abilities.

Charles's hands are bound above his head, crossed at his wrists so the iron figure-eights around them before threading through his fingers and melting back into the bed frame again.

The iron is cheap, which Erik dislikes. It rides imperfectly against his metal-sense. "Next time," he tells Charles as he smooths a rough patch that presses to close to the perfect turn of Charles's ankle, "I'll make you something from the finest steel – or maybe only the purest iron. Or bronze, even, to set off your skin." Copper, to match the freckles dusting Charles's shoulders.

"And you'd like that, wouldn't you," he continues, adjusting the fit of the iron minutely, pressing against Charles's pulse point at one instant, fluttering in the sensitive cup of his palm the next. "Anything to keep you in bed and ready for me, so all you could do would be blush that innocent, lying blush of yours even as you ask me very prettily – very _politely_ – for my cock in your mouth or your tight little arse."

"I'd like it now," Charles murmurs, his eyes downcast so his lashes sweep his cheeks. "If you don't mind, sir."

Erik's cock twitches, the ache solidifying itself into something unignorably present. He knows Charles sees the tightening of his fingers in the fabric of his trousers, the fabric wrinkling as his nails catch at it.

"Not yet," Erik says when he thinks he can speak again without saying _god Charles anything_. "I wanted to remind you first, of what I'm going to do to you tonight. And then, after I've made you come… Well, we'll see, won't we?"

Charles looks down at his own cock, which is flushed and already hard, slick at the head with anticipation, before offering Erik a look that is entirely too sardonic given their relative positions. "You're going to make me come while you're sitting… _there._ "

"Did you touch yourself this morning, Charles?" Erik catches a flicker of image-memory, the sense of frustrated yearning and fists clenched at his side. The memory doesn't end in Charles reaching for his cock or the blurry satisfaction of release. "Oh, you didn't…" _No, I was good for you, Erik; I wanted to wait._ "I don't know whether to be pleased that you kept yourself for me, or disappointed… I should have liked to know you woke to thoughts of me so potent the first thing you did was take yourself in hand, imagining it was me there with you – that you didn't slick those fine fingers of yours and fuck yourself with them, trying to pretend they were my cock."

A whimper escapes quite before Charles can bite it back and the blush on his cheeks – the blush that obscures those faint freckles dusting his skin – spreads down his neck to wash across his chest. His nipples are hard, waiting for Erik to bend over and take the closest one between his teeth and bite down.

"You've been unmarked for two weeks now," Erik observes. He can't see Charles's back, of course, but Charles gives him a memory of looking in the mirror from a few days ago, his strong, broad shoulders and the clean column of his spine running down to an arse that, before Erik had left, carried the shell-pink remnants of handprints and bruises shaped to Erik's fingers – and, once Erik had gotten up from kneeling behind him, slick lines of saliva and red scrapes and two rings of teethmarks. That memory is pristine, though, only the longing trail of Charles's fingers down his flanks and hips suggesting something other than innocent exploration.

 _We'll have to take care of that_ , Charles sends, the thought tinged with burning want, the spice of it searing across Erik's mind. The long flat of his belly trembles, the muscle beneath his navel twitching as he moves against his shackles, using the bare leverage of the bonds about his wrists to pull himself up. Erik makes a reproving noise, _no, no moving_ and tugs on the metal, stretching Charles's legs out even more, lamplight falling on the shadowed, humid space between his thighs. Charles moans quietly and twists as if trying to cover up, or emphasize his cock, now perfectly flushed and hard, and _you said you wanted your mouth on me._

"Soon," Erik says, although all he can think of now is pulling Charles into him, licking up that firm, delicious length to suck on the head and draw on the sticky dampness there. "But first… first I should spend some time on your nipples, I think. I could suckle them for hours, as I think I told you, and torment them the way you like best: I'd lick and bite one, tugging it until it's swollen and aching while I pinch the other one and roll it between my thumb and forefinger just _so_ ," he raises a hand to demonstrate, pressing digits together around imaginary flesh while in front of him Charles jerks and whines, his back a flawless, mathematical arch.

"And then," Erik unbuttons his collar and pulls at his tie, two more buttons and even the close air of the room falls cool on his chest, "I will drink from the cup of your navel. It's a line in the _Šîr haŠîrîm_ , of course, _Your navel is a rounded goblet, that never lacks blended wine_ , and you would moan and writhe to tempt me lower, trying to rub your poor, neglected cock up against me and beg me to touch you only once – as if once could ever be enough for you, never mind I've told you I won't touch you until I'm good and ready. Could it? Could you ever be satisfied with my hand on your prick only once?"

"No, Erik," Charles gasps. His brown hair, damp with sweat, clings to his forehead and spreads across the pillow, thick and fine, perfect to sink his hands into and tug and pull to get Charles's mouth on his cock, or to expose the long line of his neck for a bite.

Erik swallows again, his vision hazy at the edges with the tendrils of Charles's suggestions pulling at him. "There's so much of you to worship and torment, though." 

It's true; the catalogue is nearly endless, from the ink-stained pads of Charles's fingers to his toes, which Charles can't bear to have touched without twitching away and laughing. There's the sweetly salty tender skin behind his knee and in the join of his elbow, the soft intersection at his armpit, a particular place at Charles's hip that holds a fascination Erik's never been able to parse, vulnerable and powerful at the same time – something in the subdued curve of it and its soft skin, maybe, although underneath it's all firm muscle and bone when Erik presses against it. Charles is compact and strong all over – it would be a mistake to think of him as waifish or weak and Erik never would. The fact that Charles is the one bound and helpless on their bed and Erik is the one feeling himself fall towards powerlessness – that says far more about their relationship than anything else.

 _What if I should disobey?_ Charles asks, sensing weakness and smiling that sphinx-smile that demands Erik either kiss it off him or rise to the challenge. _Or try to escape?_

"To punish you," Erik says as he undoes his waistcoat, shifting as discreetly as he can to accommodate his erection, "I should stop touching you, but I won't be able to. You know too well what you do to me. When you look at me with those eyes, you're all innocence on top and whorishness below; you _know_ , don't you, what you do to me."

"Only what you do to me," Charles whispers. His skin has heated beautifully against the restraints, a warm caress that Erik registers almost as clearly as a physical touch. With shaking fingers, he undoes the buttons on his trousers, smirking as Charles's fogged-glass eyes fix on his hands, the pale lines of his fingers against the charcoal fabric.

"I will be so far gone with wanting you," Erik continues, the words stumbling from him, almost as graceless as he is when he opens the bedside table drawer to produce the tin and draw it to him with his ability, "I think I should break you, burn you, ruin you with the force of it. I'll forget gentleness, opening you up too roughly – but you'll like it, won't you? Like me stretching you the way you haven't allowed yourself, my fingers – three of them, or maybe just two, whatever my patience can stand – buried in you and opening you and feeling you tremble around me like a virgin, shaking with fear and a desire the body can't understand… You'll arch your hips up into me, begging for more, anything, whatever I wish to give you – but what do you want above all?"

"Your cock," Charles whispers, his thoughts a tumble of profanity and potent images in Erik's head, the two of them twisted together, Erik's hands bracing his hips upward so Erik can push into him, the thick length of him pressing in and in and inexorable and Charles's body like a wave, surging and pulsing against Erik and pulling him along. Shamed pleasure drifts on the edges, coloring the pictures rose-red, even as Charles thinks, _I'll show you how you feel when you're in me, when you've split me open and I can't breathe I'm so full of you._

"You'll have that." Charles is shameless, of course; the blush is purely for Erik, to remind him how much Charles loves it. He climbs onto the bed, awkward with the barrier of thigh and knee, and settles between Charles's legs so he can look up the gorgeous stretch of Charles's body, flushed all over with desire, from the upcurved cock between his legs up to where the frustrated sweat has collected in the valley between his collar bones. He can smell Charles, salt and faint soap and the thicker scent that Erik wants to nuzzle into as he licks at Charles's balls and the delicate skin encasing them. His own cock throbs mercilessly and he wonders if Charles has his own magnetism, his body pulling and tugging at Erik's even as his want washes over him, over and over again.

"I'll press my cock into you slowly, watching your tight little hole stretch around the head," Erik murmurs, flicking the last button free. "You'll try to press down on it, greedy little slut that you are, but there's nowhere for you to go – you're bound, you're helpless, and you know you can only take what I wish to give you. But never fear, my darling," and he can't help it, he lays a hand on Charles's hip, shaping his hand to it, and Charles jumps and moans, staring up at him huge-eyed, "you'll have all of it, everything you can take."

 _Erik._ Charles is all a-tremble now, his hips moving in short, yearning thrusts, straining upward for a touch that isn't coming. There's no leverage to be had with the way Erik's bound him but Charles digs at the mattress with his heels, the sturdy muscle of his thigh and calf flexing as if Charles is already trying to push down onto Erik's prick. _Erik, Erik, Erik_ Charles's mind-voice is resonant with want, _please_.

"I will fuck you open so slowly," Erik croons. "You're so tight for me, but still so ready I might not be as careful as I should be." The lid flips off the tin with a thought, the oil sudden and sleek on Erik's fingers, staining the rumpled sheet translucent. "You'll whimper and cry out, pleas for me to stop, to keep going, to stop even as you try to take me in further. But," Erik has to close his eyes and reach for the scenario he'd written about and planned in the solitude of his room and the tedium of the train, "I go at my own pace, watching my thick cock disappear into you and you taking me so beautifully, so prettily, your arsehole clenching around me, so slick with the oil I've got on you, my fingers tracing patterns in it and rubbing it – one, maybe, slipping in alongside my prick, stretching you even further – "

Charles comes then, open-mouthed and open-eyed and shocky, come spilling across his belly and catching in the thatch of hair between his legs and along the tender crease of his navel. His pleasure is tidal, a fierce wave that catches Erik up in ecstasy and washes him away from himself in a flood of Charles's satisfaction. And Charles is alight with it, burning like the sun against Erik's half-shut eyes, clutching at the iron woven between his fingers, tendrils of delight brushing at Erik again and again to leave him shaking.

He's on Charles almost before he knows it, one hand shoving his trousers down and heedless of the oil stains on the expensive fabric, the other sliding between Charles's legs. He's hot and quivering still, the cleft of his arse slick with sweat and now with something more as Erik presses his middle finger in. Charles sighs and turns his thigh out a little more to accommodate, all he can manage being bound as he is. His spent cock trembles against his belly, a few last drops of come oozing out for Erik to bend down and taste, hunching over Charles like a predator over its trembling prey, Charles moaning low as Erik licks across his cockhead, sensitive from his orgasm, and Erik does it again to feel Charles twitch uncomfortably and murmur his name.

"Please," Charles whimpers, and Erik does it again to feel pleasure-loose muscles seize, and bites Charles's stomach besides.

This part, at least, will be true to his imaginings: Erik's too far gone to be careful or be slow. He opens Charles swiftly, one finger and then two and the third is almost perfunctory, but Charles is making only welcoming, hopeful sounds and encouraging Erik with faint murmurs about how long he's waited, how he hasn't touched himself, has kept himself for Erik, _I'll be so tight for you_ , Charles adds, as if Erik hasn't fully understood.

Finally, finally he has his dick out, Charles's eyes huge and blown black as he fixes on it. Erik pauses to stroke oil over himself from base to tip, staring down at his own cock, thick and hot as it rests in his palm, and the civilized, fine fabric of his trousers, the cufflinks he hasn't unfastened yet, and Charles naked and unabashed and spread out waiting for him. He flicks his thumb across the slit for the brief, incapacitating pleasure of it and Charles's heartfelt moan when he sees the wetness gathering there.

"You want it, don't you?" he asks, and Charles sends back _yes please oh Erik_ , molten with need. He palms himself meaningfully, slick flesh against slick flesh, and Charles whines and arches, eyes sliding shut.

 _You'll come in me_ , Charles thinks at him, the image tinged with certainty rather than hope or pleading. _You'll stay buried in me, won't you, as you spend yourself, and afterwards you could lick it from me, fuck me into another orgasm with only that lovely mouth and tongue of yours. Or we could lie together and you'd so-casually play with my arse, sliding two fingers in to feel the come you've left in me and how loose I am from your cock. Or I could wake like that, already hard from your attention…_

The images surround him like fever-dreams, gripping him tight and holding on deep under his skin. _Charles_ , Erik thinks helplessly and with far less care than he'd imagined pushes awkwardly forward.

Charles's body, even loose from orgasm as it is, resists at first, and _gentle gentle_ Erik tells himself, gripping his cock tight and thrusting into the wet clench of his fist rather than into Charles. His next attempt – yes, yes that's better, nudging against Charles's hole once, twice, a promise of heat before he can push in. And push in, and in, slowly, the swollen head of his cock pressing and sliding into the clutch of Charles's body with aching slowness.

 _Oh god Erik_. Even the thought is choky, nearly incoherent. Charles is boneless with pleasure and heat, urging Erik on with slow undulations of his hips and Erik can only oblige.

Two weeks, it's been two weeks since this. Sweat drips in Erik's eyes, his hair damp and clinging to his forehead in the heat of their room and the heat coming off Charles like a furnace. He slides in and slides, images and sensations coming to him as if refracted through prisms, the aching, barely-yielding stretch that is Charles's body giving way, the thick, searing fullness of Erik's cock resting in him once Erik's pushed in as deep as he can get. Charles is all directionless satisfaction, radiating out from the ache deep between his legs where he's spread apart but the rest suffusing him and filling his nerves and veins and the spaces between his bones. It spills over into Erik, spreads like a forest fire until all of him is alight with it.

Erik starts to move, awkward until he can brace himself above Charles properly and drive down into him. The first thrust jolts a moan from Charles's throat, the second gets another one that's rougher, twisting with desperation at the end. _Come, my love_ Charles says and doesn't say, his thoughts a bright beacon of encouragement, _let me have all of you._

It's what Erik gives him, nearly broken with pleasure as he fucks all those delightful noises out of Charles, breaking the tendrils of iron shackling Charles's ankles so he can push his legs back, tilting Charles's hips up. The angle makes it sweeter, Charles still vulnerable and relying on Erik to hold him up, and Erik able to push in deeper now, until his hips are caught in the cradle of Charles's pelvis and he's buried in Charles, his own hips straining to keep him there. 

He manages a few more thrusts, the subterranean pressure of Charles's body absolutely devastating, and he comes with one last, stuttering push up and _in_ that leaves him collapsed atop Charles with his face buried in Charles's neck and the two of them tangled stickily together. His orgasm goes on and on, perfect right up to the point of pain after going without Charles for so long, come spilling into Charles in pulses that he thinks, hazily, he will lick out of Charles soon – god, yes, more – always, always more, and _Charles_ he thinks, sinking onto the body spread out pliantly beneath him.

Charles nudges at him – tied, Erik thinks muzzily, he's still bound – and waits for Erik to come back to himself enough to unthread the metal from between his fingers. Gingerly, Charles lowers his arms and flexes his fingers, making a satisfied sound at the faint abrasions left on his wrists before turning to Erik again to smooth the hair out of his eyes and lick teasingly at his lips.

"God, I've missed you," Erik murmurs against Charles's mouth. That mouth is swollen and sweet, bitten into sensitivity so Erik can't help but do some biting of his own before he licks his way in. Charles gives way gracefully for a moment before kissing back and sending his own _I missed you as well_ in return.

They part for breath, and for Charles to grin madly at him and flop back onto his pillow so Erik can inspect him lazily, aimless touches that are mostly for reacquaintance rather than for arousal. He's so finely made, Erik thinks, perfect and completely _his_ , and the answering hum of approval, and Charles's hands wandering the plains of him, informs Erik it works both ways. The thought is strangely comforting, although Erik has always despised the notion of being _owned_ , enough to send lassitude stealing through him and to persuade him to relax close to Charles's warm, damp flank.

 _What happened to all your grand plans?_ Charles asks, smug bastard that he is and unfairly articulate considering what they've just done. Erik changes the kiss he'd been pressing to the inside of Charles's wrist into a nip. _I seem to recall a very thorough and prolonged ravishing._

 _Those can keep_ , he says, and gives Charles his hand back in exchange for drawing Charles beneath his arm, Erik half-covering him now with one leg slung over Charles's and his thumb tracing the line of Charles's collar bone for the space of time he needs to reach out for the lamp to turn it off and leave the room in the dark broken only by the city lights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from Rimbaud's "L'étoile a pleuré rose."


	4. Dans l'onde toi devenu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was in London the other day, and in a bookseller's along The Strand I found the most interesting and instructive volume. Or rather, it would have proved instructive if we had not already worked our way through much of the repertoire. I also doubt the author was an adaptive skilled with magnetism; otherwise he might have known to include something like the time when I lay in bed while you sat across the room and touched yourself and fucked me with that glorious metal toy of yours.
> 
> But our anonymous instructor did include the one where you tied me to the bedpost with my belt and whipped me with yours, which shows good taste and judgment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is the new one!

**Dans l'onde toi devenu (in the wave you have become)**

He sends letters, of course, because out in the sticks there's not much to do except tend to Westchester's endless affairs. And, of course, avoid tending to those affairs by going on walks, riding, and writing letters that make him hard and thrill secretly when he hands the properly-sealed, addressed envelope to the butler.

> I was in London the other day, and in a bookseller's along The Strand I found the most interesting and instructive volume. Or rather, it would have proved instructive if we had not already worked our way through much of the repertoire. I also doubt the author was an adaptive skilled with magnetism; otherwise he might have known to include something like the time when I lay in bed while you sat across the room and touched yourself and fucked me with that glorious metal toy of yours.
> 
> But our anonymous instructor did include the one where you tied me to the bedpost with my belt and whipped me with yours, which shows good taste and judgment.
> 
> Even though you would loathe it utterly, I am selfish enough to wish you were here. Maybe tonight I'll see if I can reach across the Channel to you – when I'm alone in my bed, untouched and wanting – and I can show you some new games to play together. Or, perhaps a game of chess?

The old house in Somerset makes the new house in New York look warm and welcoming. Of course, the new house has Raven – not at the moment; she had written to Charles, telling him she has gone off on one of her adventures with Irene – while the old house, with its Conqueror-built ring walls and hall that Henry VIII once stood in to escape a rainstorm, holds only his mother. At least, Charles tells himself, it no longer holds Kurt or Cain. 

His mother is a blur of discontent in her bedroom as she waits for her maid to fetch her gloves, the maid's mind a darting firefly of anxiety dragging a load of resignation behind it. Poor Miss Smith, Charles thinks as he closes his mind off to her; he'll have to see if he can't win her some clemency tonight, for however long it lasts. Imperfection has always been the one thing that rouses Sharon Xavier, whether it's a fold in her dress that fails to lie just right or her strange, fierce adopted daughter or otherworldly son. She has as little patience for a maid's fallibility. Maybe even less.

The rest of the time she is much as she has been since Charles had arrived for his visit, soothed by a life that she, in defiance of the war and the onslaught of change, has preserved. Charles eyes his armoire resignedly, where his white tie and tails wait. He's already sent his valet the suggestion that he feels unwell and will join the dinner party late, and Mr. Walters had reported the news to Miss Smith, who had of course informed Her Ladyship. Now his mother is contemplating the empty spot at the dinner table, the empty spot next to Lady Rosamond Parrish, the excuses she'll have to make on behalf of her absent son, how the entire course of the conversation concerning Lady Rosamond's season in London and her previous year in Paris will have to be saved for Charles's appearance.

Rosamond is pretty enough, Charles supposes, and intelligent, certainly eligible if he were interested in the lovely last flower of the British aristocracy. Next to Erik, though, her brilliance fades to something shopworn – or, perhaps, something preserved in a museum, hung in an elegant frame but with no particular life of its own.

Erik, of course, had steadfastly refused the habitual invitation to come along. He understands, intellectually, the reasons for Charles's occasional trips home, even if politically he refuses to accept them. _However did you survive, living in such hardship?_ he'd asked Charles the one time he had deigned to accompany Charles back to England – and even then, he had only seen the house from a distance before betaking himself to lodgings at the pub. The house in New York, grander and newer than this, and thus far more vulgar, would have been beyond Erik's endurance.

His goings-home have to do with the careful preservation of the estate. Charles admits to an aristocrat's conservatism; he doesn't _want_ to leave Westchester, whether to see it go to an up-and-coming capitalist or be relegated to the status of a museum. It's his home and, however difficult a place it is, his life has always turned around it and been planned in its service. The excuse he gives Erik is that his work – their work – would benefit from the steady income of the estate's investments, rather than selling the thing lock, stock, and barrel. Erik, of course, sees through the excuse, but with rare tact, refrains from bringing it up whenever the house comes up for debate.

Nomad that he is, even Erik understands that need to have a place.

 _My place is with you_ , Erik had said one night, after one of their rare discussions of the past. They'd been in bed together, pressed close despite the sticky summer evening air and aroused but not urgent. In a fit of pique – one mostly brought on by the deadly tedium of the evening ahead of him – Charles wishes that statement had been enough to keep Erik by him even here.

He finally succumbs to the need to bathe and dress, sensing the guests downstairs and his mother's perpetual dissatisfaction spiking as Lady Violet Parrish, Countess of Norbury, asks her about "that darling son of yours, Sharon; Rosamond needs someone her own age to talk with while we old people sit about being boring." Through Sharon's eyes, Charles catches a glimpse of the Lady Rosamond herself in green and gold, a style that's new in Paris and thus probably offensive to Sharon's sensibilities. Rosamond gazes coolly back at her and Charles flits out of Sharon's head, back to his bedchamber.

His valet has seen to his bath and left, under silent telepathic orders to let Charles bathe in peace. The bathing room echoes emptily, all that tile and only Charles to fill it as he splashes aimlessly with the soap and washcloth. As he runs the soap across his chest and down ( _down_ , lower, sensation of skin on skin muffled by the water), he thinks again of his letter, and the telegram he'd sent, _I do miss you. A week until I return is too long_ , and sends himself arcing outward once again, spreading his awareness across the house, the pleasure gardens and the small pond, the labyrinth, beyond to the rolling hills and the forests, the road leading up from the gate – and, traveling along that road in the twilit late summer evening, a singular mind, blazing like a comet.

 _Erik!_ he sings out his joy, and feels Erik's surly pleasure curling around him in response: _Damn your chess anyways, Charles. And your drive is too long._

 _I won't be a minute_ , Charles replies, and sends along a flash of himself still naked in his bath, leg hiked up so it's draped over the rim of the tub. Erik's mind throbs against his, a brief frustrated pulse, before Charles laughs and pulls away from him and climbs out. The water sluices down his body, chilled a little, but unexpectedly sensuous. He stretches into it, his nipples tightening with the cold, and sighs happily at the release of tension.

Leyden has put out his clothes already, good man, and is safe away downstairs where he doesn't have to see Charles half-hard and languid, idly slipping on underthings and trousers (leaving the placket open for a moment until he can brace himself against the fabric pressing against his cock), the crisp propriety of his shirt. After a few years on his own, he's used to dressing himself and prefers it – unless, of course, Erik does it. Perhaps tomorrow morning, Charles thinks as he makes a hash of his tie, Erik can dress him, those wonderful fingers managing buttons and snaps and Charles's body all with equal competence, his power threading the cufflinks effortlessly through the holes.

Of course, to get to tomorrow they'll have tonight. Charles grins at his reflection in the mirror, a high flush on his cheeks already and blue eyes bright with something Erik calls _mischief_. Charles prefers to think of it as the knowledge that he's going to have a lovely time. After he's shuffled on his shoes and checked his reflection one more time – so not-sober, so indecorous – he bolts downstairs.

"Sir," Mr. Townsend says once he's gained the main hall, "there's a, ah, a gentleman here for you?"

Charles wants to laugh, because gild him as you may Erik will never be a gentleman, and Townsend's staring at him, the young man who's just hurried downstairs with hair improperly wet and tie poorly knotted. Townsend has a soft spot for him – most people do, Erik would say acerbically – and his thoughts of young sir needing to tidy himself up mostly have to do with his fear of Sharon's reaction. Charles gives him quick instructions for the footmen to lay another place and for Mrs. Patterson to prepare another plate. Townsend vanishes in a cloud of obedience, leaving Albert, hovering ineffectually in hopes of obtaining Erik's coat, behind.

"Charles." Erik ignores the footman thoroughly in favor of sweeping a hot gaze up and down Charles's body. Charles is hardly less obvious; Erik is road-dusty and disheveled, crackling with annoyance and lust, a combination that sometimes ends with Erik licking the red welts he's laid across Charles's arse.

"You're just in time for dinner, my friend," Charles says brightly, ignoring Erik's sudden puzzlement and _upstairs now what is this_. "Do let Albert take your coat and suitcase… Albert, if you'll have a room made up for Mr. Lehnsherr? The blue room, I think."

"To hell with your dinner and your guestroom," Erik growls. Albert jumps and mutters a hasty "very good, sir" as he skitters away, and Charles laughs. _Devil_ , Erik thinks, all predatory attention now and all fixed on Charles, promises of retribution that bring the heat up under Charles's skin. _Do you intend to torment me for the rest of the evening?_

 _Torment us both, perhaps_ , Charles says. _Satisfaction is always sweeter after prolonged anticipation, is it not?_

* * *

"So, Mr. Lehnsherr," Sharon's mouth curls around Erik's name as if she's just tasted something sour, "what is it you do?"

"I'm a writer and critic," Erik replies around a mouthful of lamb. Lady Violet Parrish and Sir Robert wear twin expressions of well-bred shock, while Rosamond gazes at Erik with fascination. At least, Charles thinks dryly, he doesn't have to repel Rosamond's attentions. Still… _Darling, I'll thank you not to pay too much attention to your new admirer_ , he thinks, which has Erik smirking.

"An art critic?" Dr. Ashbury asks, austere face melting into something like interest. He's become Sharon's confidant in the years after Kurt's death, willing to take the money of a dissatisfied woman. "What do you think of all that new art coming out now, absolutely _shocking_."

"No more shocking than some dead Italian's Zeus carrying off Ganymede," Erik says. Lady Violet emits a scandalized _Well, I never –_ ; Charles catches a flash of _himself_ from Erik, a willing captive despite his blushes, wrapped in silk and a powerful embrace. "But no, _Herr Doktor_ , a critic of our society and our times."

That very nearly destroys the conversation right there. Sharon sinks into a thorny patch of resentment and anger that good breeding restrains her from venting on her son and his uncivilized guest. Lady Rosamond is thinking very unladylike thoughts. Not that Charles can blame her; they had delayed dinner so Erik could clean up, and Erik _does_ clean up quite nicely.

 _Almost clean_ , he thinks indulgently, and shifts as Erik sends him a reproving mental swat. He dominates his end of the table, with the aristocratic planes of his face and pale eyes that catch the light from the candelabra, those broad shoulders straining against the civility of his dinner jacket. Everything about him is imbued with a fierce pride, a surety of his own power that speaks to Charles's own. 

"Charles," his mother says, and only his mutation allows him the attention necessary to field the question, "when do you mean to give up that _ridiculous_ apartment in Paris? I've spoken with your cousin, Lady Sophia; you're quite welcome to stay with her, if you insist on living there." Sharon takes an anemic sip of wine. "So busy and crowded; I'm sure it's dreadful in the summer."

"But so much fun!" Rosamond says. Her thoughts are pink with embarrassment, mostly for Charles. "I had such a lovely time when I was there last year. I should love to go back."

The _ridiculous apartment_ is the set of rooms at Le Meurice, which Sharon considers marginally acceptable if déclassé, well and good if one were slumming it for a few weeks over a summer but hardly any longer. Charles has never told her of the one he keeps with Erik in the rue de Fleurus, the one with their small bed and the pipes that had creaked until Erik fixed them. Truthfully, he would much rather be there than here; so would Erik, who is giving off waves of irritation and _not-belonging_ with each heartbeat. 

Reflexively, Charles soothes him, _we'll be away soon enough_ , even as he says to his mother, "Oh, Cousin Sophia's place is ages outside the city, and there are only so many hours in the day for Erik and I to get our work done."

 _So many hours_ , he sends, twisting affection through the words, and the sensation of what it's like to lie cradled in Erik's arms, aching and spent, with Erik's long legs twined through his.

"What sorts of work do you do?" poor innocent Rosamond asks, which brings a smile to Erik's face and heat to Charles's, a blush that stays until the men stand to let the ladies go through – and flares to life again as Erik steps close when Dr. Ashby goes to fetch a cigar, a fleeting press of his erection against Charles's arse, fingers dug tight into his hip, before Erik moves away.

* * *

"So this was your childhood bedroom?" Erik asks later, after the guests have retired and Sharon has vanished to her own chambers.

Erik had come here brazenly – not precisely the same as walking from the bachelors' and guest corridors to the ladies' rooms – but Charles had felt him coming, the deliberate stride matched to the pulse of intent that had thrummed like an engine up the hallways. He had opened the door himself, the smallest exercise of his power, and then closed it with Charles's body pushed up against it as Erik had lifted him into a kiss. Charles hadn't bothered to block the heavy thud of the door slamming shut from any passing servants, too distracted by Erik tilting his head and himself suspended, helpless, taking what Erik gave him.

Now Erik's splendidly naked in the lamplight, fire-bright against the dark sky beyond the window. The light loves him, of course it does, gilding the broad line of his shoulders and the long run of his back. Charles has kissed every single one of those vertebrae and the ridge where hip becomes thigh, and the warm, sensitive crease at Erik's groin. He's unself-conscious in his nakedness, as in command of the room – of Charles – in only his skin as he is in immaculate black wool and linen.

"Well, there was the nursery at first," Charles says. He's naked too, already tumbled into bed, his body loose but everything else in him tense and waiting, ready for Erik to strum him and make him sing. "But this was my room for a few years before I went to America. And I stay in it when I come back to visit."

Erik hums, turning away from the window. He's on his way to aroused, thoughts fogged over with the images Charles's letter had conjured, stretched back into memory and forward into what he wants to do to Charles tonight. He is, Charles thinks with a helpless wonder, completely magnificent, his hard thighs and thick, half-hard cock rising from the gingery thatch of hair beneath his navel. Charles licks his lips and smirks as Erik's gaze catches on the play of his tongue and the moist sheen it leaves behind and sends Erik a hopeful picture of those powerful thighs straddling him, Charles hanging on with fingers dug into the anchors of Erik's hips while Erik fucks his mouth.

Cruelly, Erik shakes his head, and Charles makes a disappointed noise even as his heart quickens. It's tempting to look beyond what Erik's speculated on already, but this is the game – the game that quickens his blood like nothing else, giving control over to Erik this way.

"Anticipation makes satisfaction all the sweeter, didn't you say?" Erik purrs. It's the purr of a big cat, satisfied and primal, watching as Charles goes pliant on his bed. Erik runs a finger across the bedspread, perhaps feeling out the gilding in the massive bedposts, before settling on the edge, settling one broad hand across Charles's belly.

"This place hasn't changed in decades, has it?" Charles has the feeling Erik isn't referring to the furniture; he nods, puzzled as to where this is going. "Your home… it must have been a prison for you, buttoned-down and proper every second of your life when you've never been terribly good at being proper." _Pretending_ , Erik thinks clearly, enough smugness to the thought you'd think he was the telepath.

 _Everyone else pretends_ , Charles thinks back, not trusting his voice. Looking at people sometimes is to look at two or more of them, the sight of them doubled, tripled, quadrupled as if through a prism, everything they are broken down into the appropriate parts of their spectrum before Charles can recombine them into a whole and encase them in flesh again. Erik is no less duplicitous than most people, but here, with Charles – both of them are honest, naked as their bodies.

"No pretending with me tonight, Charles," Erik murmurs, bending close over Charles's prone body. "I want you to shake down this house with your cries. I want _everyone_ to know who it is who's fucking you, and know how much you love it." Charles's breath snags in his chest, his cock a throbbing heavy _thing_ against his belly. He twitches minutely, trying to brush the head against Erik's palm. Erik smirks. "Look at you, so desperate already. You've _been_ desperate though, poor thing, haven't you?"

"Every day," Charles gasps, face going red. He isn't ashamed, precisely, but _disbelieving_ , caught off-guard by how much he wants. It's a fire that goes down, sometimes, in the aftermath when he's glutted on Erik and filled up with him, but it never truly dies.

"I have been too," Erik says, almost quiet and serious for a moment before he shows Charles what he wants.

Charles's mouth drops open in a soundless _oh_ as a lump of metal rises from Erik's valise. Under the invisibly stroking fingers of Erik's power, it fashions itself into a ring, silver except where the lamps gild it in long, liquid swirls. He has to grit his teeth as it slips cold against his hot flesh, tightening beneath his balls.

"You'll wear that until I come," Erik says calmly, although his thoughts are jagged against Charles's, like tongues of flame. "And when I come depends on you."

"Yes, Erik," Charles says and, after the silent permission he sees in Erik's grey eyes, reaches carefully into Erik's mind and _presses_ at the burning-bright nodes deep in Erik's brain. The moan he gets for that nearly makes him back off, Erik's head tipping forward and eyes rolling back as he stares blindly down at his fully-erect cock.

"That was…" Erik shakes it off, the pain of a too-swift erection – but not, Charles thinks with a bit of triumph, the knowledge that Charles won't let him come, his telepathy tamping down on the signals that allow culmination. "Charles, you are magnificent."

"I do try," Charles says, with a saucy sort of modesty that has Erik turning _that_ hot, dangerous look on him.

"I think," Erik says quietly, "that it's time for you to shut that lovely mouth of yours, unless you're planning on doing something useful with it."

"I thought that wasn't allowed tonight?" That wins him a growl and Erik pouncing on him, taking him by the shoulder so his nails dig five crescents into Charles's skin. They begin white with the pressure of Erik's grip but flush red quickly, tiny flashes of pain that bleed through him. Charles goes with it, turning compliantly onto his stomach, his cheek pressed into the luxury of the duvet.

"Look at you," Erik murmurs, voice rich with lust and want and all of it for Charles. "God, Charles, look at you."

"You'll have to tell me what you see," Charles says into the velvet, shifting his hips for the soft, maddening drag of it against his cock.

"I see you spread out on blue velvet like a prize, like a jewel in a shop on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré," Erik husks. He bends low, straddling Charles – the lion Charles had been thinking of earlier; with his head twisted to the side he sees Erik's hand pressing into the mattress – and says to the warm curve of Charles's neck, "So very exquisite, Charles. And you're mine, aren't you?"

"Yours, Erik," Charles whispers, his tongue clumsy with the words and nearly breaking them. 

"No marks on you, except those I put on you, and even those go away after a while," Erik says musingly. He works down Charles's body, lighting desire everywhere so it runs electric under Charles's skin. Charles twists and moves as best he can with Erik's heavy body over him and Erik's command ringing in his head. "But I know they're there," Erik continues, softly possessive and exultant, "however invisible they are."

They sink down, Charles knows, everything Erik puts on him, from the new scratches in his shoulders to the bite Erik's administered to the left of his spine. The red handprints, the bitemarks, the perfect parallel lines from a belt, the scratches and bruises where Erik holds him tight and the come when he swallows it or Erik spurts across his skin – they go down deep under his skin, subterranean brands that burn _Erik, Erik, Erik_ over muscle and bone. The ring around his red, hurting cock is another, and Charles will feel its imprint long after Erik's taken it off.

"You remember, of course." Erik's shouldered Charles's legs apart, arms under his hips to lift him up. The new position has Charles squirming for something, _anything_ on his cock, but Erik, the bastard, won't give it to him. "Please, Erik," Charles begs in the tone he knows Erik loves, soft and strained with a bit of a catch in the hinge of the syllables of Erik's name.

"Not unless you want to let me come early," Erik says, before nipping at the soft curve of Charles's arse. "Do you really," another bite, more emphatic, and Charles yelps, "want me to come without having me in you once tonight?"

Charles's moan at the thought of getting that lovely, big cock in him has to do for an answer, and Erik must take it as such. He licks into Charles, tongue and fingers slicking and stretching his hole, Erik's chin stubble-rough on skin that Charles is sure has bled pink with bites and exertion. Charles moans and hitches forward, half-maddened when getting the friction of fabric on his cock means Erik's tongue is no longer on him. A hand clutches at him, drawing him back onto Erik's mouth and into a deeply filthy kiss as Erik licks him loose and wet.

 _Please_. It's not really a word, but an approximation in Charles's first language, want and need and _now_ given shape by the particularity of his desire. Erik makes an inarticulate sound and draws off him with last fervent damp slide of tongue. A moment later he catches the flicker of Erik exercising his power to call the metal tin of oil to him. Charles hitches around enough to watch as Erik slicks his cock from root to tip, fisting himself casually but with a bitten-lipped intensity that he cannot hide from Charles, not in this space.

Erik's prick bumps clumsily against him as Erik gets into position, two hurried fingers slipping into him that Charles hisses impatiently through, and then Erik's steadying himself and the thick head of his cock is pressing at his hole and then the resistance, then the yielding, as Charles gives way to him.

"Oh god Erik," Charles manages. He presses back, able to do it only because Erik's hands are slippery from the oil. It burns, the slow, inexorable slide of Erik into him, and it's _so good_ , made better by hot visions of what he looks like to Erik's eyes, flushed and writhing like the perfect, shameless slut he is – _only for me though, just for me, no one else_ , is Erik's greedy addendum – and Erik's cock disappearing into him as Charles fucks himself on it.

"Remember what I said," Erik breathes into his ear as he rocks against Charles meaningfully, bending close so they're melded front and back, two matching curves. Erik sinks his teeth into Charles's shoulder, a flare of specific pain to bring Charles back to listening where he's lost in the feeling of Erik's cock up in him. "No hiding what you are, Charles. And when you let me come, you can come."

 _Yes yes yes, just move_ , Charles thinks, on fire with impatience. He doesn't know how long he can last, but he _wants_ to last, to show Erik he can – to show he can last as long as Erik wants him to, maybe past the point where he's reduced Erik to helpless shoving and fumbling and Charles can please himself as he chooses. He manages to drag it out, focusing on how it might feel to ride Erik lazily, luxuriating in the pleasure of Erik moving atop him and lacing kisses across his freckled back. His mind sings filthy odes to how lovely Charles's tight little ass feels around his cock, clenching, keeping, how good it will feel to fill Charles up.

"So good," Charles manages. His voice sounds like he's run a mile, loud in a silence filled only by breath and the slide of their bodies together. He twists a little to change the angle and _there_ , Erik's cockhead rubs up against that place inside him, sparking pleasure and a spasm of telepathic _give it to me give me more_ that has Erik snarling and superior, hunching close over him to say _Do you think you can take all of me, Charles? Beloved?_ There isn't much endearment in the word, not with Erik hitching his hips hard enough to remind Charles where he is. Charles's own cock twitches, and Charles tries to reach for it, forgetful of the ring, and Erik seizes his hand and forces it to the covers.

 _Mine_ , is the vicious thought as Erik pushes his shoulders down, canting his hips so Erik can push in deeper. Charles yowls like some heat-ridden thing, the cry spiraling up sharply as Erik thrusts past the last resistance his body offers, his thick, heavy length stretching Charles inexorably wide as he sinks in to the very root of him. Erik slides out and back in once, twice, a third time, harder and harder, his mind a litany of _perfect flawless so pretty aren't you my love my Charles like this_ , spread out and begging for it, and finally it's too much and with the last bit of coherence left to him Charles reaches for the knots he's set in Erik's mind and undoes them and sets him free.

Erik comes hard, on a cry he doesn't try to keep back, cock pulsing deep in Charles's arse as he spills himself out. Charles's head echoes with his own name and his own release, which hits him before he even knows it – Erik must have loosened that tormenting ring, thank god – and he _screams_ , Erik's name and passion wrenched out of him along with his voice. Erik's orgasm shipwrecks him, pitching him headlong and out of himself. He shivers apart, faintly aware of his fingers knotted into the duvet, but that isn't enough to hold him back – he's carried too far on his pleasure and Erik's own, drowning, drowned in bliss until at last he surfaces and begins to drift.

"Oh, Charles." Erik has the two of them pulled together, close, close, fingers threading through Charles's hair as Charles's thoughts, shaky as a newborn colt, stumble up against his. "You are…" Erik falls silent, voice and mind both, no words offering themselves up. "You are," Erik finishes, and kisses his forehead, little more than a breathless brush of lips.

His body comes back to him with reluctance, resolving into a collection of bone-deep aches and slickness and contentment. Erik's mind is a cynosure, something to orbit, as he remembers what flesh and bone are, and the throbbing aftershocks of pleasure that will hurt deliciously tomorrow. Charles relaxes into himself again and, sure of his anchor, allows his thoughts to spread out over the sleeping house.

Absently Erik's fingers slip down into the slick declivity of Charles's arse. One slips into him, hooking, seeking, and Charles shivers right down to his bones. Erik thinks something fuzzy and owner-like, _so good, filled up with my come_ , but it and the fingers go nowhere in particular, melting into a slow stroke finishing with Erik resting his hand at the base of Charles's spine, clasping him close and warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is adapted from Mallarmé's "Petit Air."


End file.
